1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of and apparatus for generating a pattern defined by a plurality of vectors, e.g., a vector font pattern, by developing the vectors, filling an area defined by the developed vectors, and drawing a contour thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
According to a known conventional character pattern generating apparatus, a character pattern is generated by drawing the contour of a character pattern or a vector font defined by a plurality of vectors and filling the area defined by the contour. In an apparatus of this type, filling has been performed by the following scheme. The entire contour of a given character is drawn. The drawn pattern is then scanned in a predetermined direction, and all the dots from a first black dot to a next black dot are converted into black dots, thereby filling the area defined by the contour.
In this scheme, however, if a tip of a character pattern present in a filling direction is one dot (to be defined as a one-dot tip), not only this one-dot tip but also a dot train therefrom are undesirably filled, as shown in FIG. 1A. In order to eliminate such inconvenience, the character pattern must be designed so as not to generate such a one-dot tip (a tip of the character pattern present as one dot in a direction perpendicular to the filling direction is not called a one-dot tip), and hence a cumbersome operation is required. Since the number of vectors is increased in accordance with the number of portions from which one-dot tips are eliminated, the generation speed of a character pattern is decreased. In addition, the above-described inconvenience is caused when odd-numbered intermediate dots (neither start dot nor end dot of filling) are present on the contour of the character pattern in a filling direction as shown in FIG. 1A. Moreover, as shown in FIG. 1B, if one-line data is present in a direction perpendicular to the filling direction, dot trains from the dot line are undesirably filled.